Popular egg and fruit trays encounter significant breakage and/or damage during delivery and storage. Care must be exercised in the collecting, processing, and handling of produce in order to prevent damaging or breaking the fruits, vegetables and other produce including eggs. A disadvantage of presently marketed trays for retail sale is that there is not a transparent protective lid to these trays and the eggs are forced to support at least a portion of the overlying trays.
Generally, as most grocers and warehouse retailers require a large sum of eggs and other produce yet do not have a large floor area for storage and/or display, such egg trays are often stacked to a substantial height and thus, can be insecure and unstable. Furthermore, presently marketed egg trays do not nest within each other and a large volume of retail space is required to display and store the egg trays. Some current egg trays contain a flat corrugated sleeve that slides over the egg trays but does not reduce stacking volume. Another shortcoming of currently retailed egg trays is that they do have not a secure lid or other feature to prevent egg tampering.
Accordingly, it is desirable to produce a secure and stable egg tray system that overcomes each of the shortcomings listed above and that virtually eliminates egg damage and breakage, promotes "tamper evident" packaging and increases the amount of eggs that can be safely and securely stored.